What comes around goes around. Apparently. Inspiration for those on the back foot, a caution for anyone riding high.

It looks like it might be going around in MotoGP. Even as Honda and Aprilia upset Ducati’s stranglehold by winning consecutive races, Ducati appear to have taken a misstep. Their 2025 (and by regulation also 2026) bike is inferior to the one it replaces. Giving supposedly second-string riders an advantage over the select factory favourites.

There’s more. It was Marco Bezzecchi’s Aprilia that won Silverstone, straight after Johann Zarco’s surprise Honda win at Le Mans, but the victory should really have belonged to the other down-at-heel Japanese factory. Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo had seized total control after a third consecutive unexpected pole, exploiting an adventurous soft-tyre gamble. Victory seemed assured, until a freak lapse – the rear ride-height device failed.

These upsets to Ducati’s control came as both factory riders, Marc Marquez and Pecco Bagnaia, continued to have troubling problems.

For Marc, a crash – his third this year from potentially winning positions. Manfully, he’s blamed himself rather than the bike. But, remember, he continued to win title after title on a Honda that was becoming less competitive year by year.

Bagnaia’s battles are even worse. He can’t get the Desmo to let him ride as he wants. Braking and corner entry had been a bulwark of his success. Not any longer. Also too many crashes – the one that ruined his Silverstone was his second on a Sunday, his sixth this year. Same as Marc.

Until Le Mans, Ducati had accumulated 22 consecutive race wins, equalling Honda’s 1997/8 record, and firmly ahead of
MV Agusta (20 wins, 1968/9). It made Zarco’s Le Mans Honda win particularly poignant.

Given fluke weather conditions and general chaos, it wasn’t enough to prove the beleaguered racing giant’s troubles are over, but it highlighted a pattern of improvement. The big guys are coming back. All of the above applies also to Yamaha. Their winless drought dates back to the middle of 2022, and again it was their conservative stick-in-the-mud engineering that gave space for the much more adventurous Ducati to seize the high ground. Yamaha hasn’t changed much on the bike – the game-saving V4 is still in the future. But they have done enough to steady the ship and re-emerge as serious contenders.

It’s all far enough away not to frighten Ducati, whose technical advantage – gained through constant innovation in aerodynamics and chassis technology – remains considerable.

What should worry them is that their new bike isn’t as good as the old one. A clear, if not actually massive, technical reversal.

It emerged at the first pre-season tests at Sepang, where by the end both factory riders had decided they didn’t like the GP25’s latest engine. It had more power, but was less friendly, particularly in terms of engine braking and corner entry.

They switched to an engine spec more like last year’s. But it wasn’t as simple as just going back to last year’s multi-successful GP24. For obscure reasons, probably because the overall engine architecture was sufficiently different, it was decided that the new chassis had to be retained.

As the season has worn on it’s become increasingly obvious that the older bike is better.

One proof comes from Alex Marquez, who has twice led on points,and claimed a first win. He struggled somewhat on a GP23 last year, the same bike that erstwhile Gresini teammate Marc used for three wins. Alex’s best was a single third. Now on a GP24, Alex reliably matches and now and then beats not only Bagnaia but also his older brother, on the nominally superior (or at least newer) GP25.

Meanwhile, rank rookie Fermin Aldeguer, also on a GP24, backed up a pair of podiums in France with regular top tens.

Can Ducati’s resident genius engineer Gigi Dall’Igna find a way to reverse this worrying trend?